English and romance languages extremely similar?
<<But it's odd that Dutch uses the "how are you called" type of construction for "what's your name" -- that seems like a very romance construction to me, similar to Sp. "Como se llama?" Ironic.... >>
It is possible in Dutch and German to ask: "Wat is uw naam?" or "Was ist Ihr Name"? but these sound kinda formal. You would be asked this at a doctors office, or when registering for something.
The original germanic was to use a passive *hait- (to be called), so it is not a romance construction in "How do you call yourself?" though it is widely found in romance languages today.
Even though it's adequately calqued, is this another borrowing of germanic idiom into romance?
<<,A good word to add to your vocabulary if you want to confuse people.>>
Another good word to use to confuse people: *ubiquitous*
'Ubiquitous' was a near obsolete word when I learned it in HS, but it has since seen a rather vivacious revival in the past couple of decades, having been saved from the brink of extinction
'hight' is a word, whether or not it is archaic or not, lest we forget. Remember the likes of 'forgo', 'sibling', 'glee'?--spared all.
That the Romance languages have structural coincidences shared with the Germanic tongues does not mean they borrowed them from the Germanic tongues and much less they are a kind of Latin-Germanic fusion like some crazy people have proposed here. It's just a question of convergent linguistic evolution that may appear when under certains circunstances. For example, both English and Spanish use "much" and "mucho" meaning "in big quantity". Assuming the reasoning of the Germanicists one may say that English has Spanish in it.
<<That the Romance languages have structural coincidences shared with the Germanic tongues does not mean they borrowed them from the Germanic tongues and much less they are a kind of Latin-Germanic fusion like some crazy people have proposed here. It's just a question of convergent linguistic evolution that may appear when under certains circunstances. For example, both English and Spanish use "much" and "mucho" meaning "in big quantity". Assuming the reasoning of the Germanicists one may say that English has Spanish in it. >>
No.
'Much' vs 'mucho' is a coincidental occurence, not a convergence. Similar to Greek pneu- (to breathe) and NW Amerindian pnew- (to breathe). Unrelated.
In Latin, "what is your name" was rendered "Quid est nomen tibe?"
After the germanic conquests, we start to see expressions parallel to the germanic ones used among romance speakers: "Comment t'appelles-tu?" (lit. how do you call yourself?) analog to the germanic way. This is not restricted solely to French: ¿Cómo se llama Usted?
This question even shows the germanic interrogative inversion (verb before noun, absent in latin. cf 'nonne' & '-ne' clitic)
'Much' vs 'mucho' is a coincidental occurence, not a convergence. Similar to Greek pneu- (to breathe) and NW Amerindian pnew- (to breathe). Unrelated.
Greek and Amerindian languages don't belong to the same linguistic family. English and Spanish do.
<<Greek and Amerindian languages don't belong to the same linguistic family. English and Spanish do. >>
That doesn't alter the fact that English 'much' < ME 'muche'/'muchel' < OE 'mycel'/'micel' is NOT related to
Spanish mucho < multo < Latin multus ("many")
OE 'mycel' ("great in number/extent") is akin to ON 'mikill', Gothic 'mikils' < PGmc mekilaz < PIE *meg-
Latin multus < PIE *mel-
no relation...
<<In Latin, "what is your name" was rendered "Quid est nomen tibe?"
After the germanic conquests, we start to see expressions parallel to the germanic ones used among romance speakers: "Comment t'appelles-tu?" (lit. how do you call yourself?) analog to the germanic way. This is not restricted solely to French: ¿Cómo se llama Usted?
>>
LOL
There is nothing like "germanic expressions". If you talk about word order I can only think about the adjective being placed before the noun as the only Germanic feature as for word order because it is consistent enough and common to all Germanic tongues, but it's not like the example you are using. English has "What is your name" that is more similar to Latin than to the equivalent expressions in German and Dutch. So assuming the logic (the lack of) of the Germanicists one must say that English adopted Latin "expressions". But the reality is that" What is your name ?"is as germanic as whatever expression Dutch has for that question because it is used in a Germanic language like English. So if one can't say English has Latin in it because of that, much less in the case of the Romance languages because their word order is very flexible in relation to the Germanic tongues, so it does not make much sense to investigate the origin of certain expressions in French or Spanish.
I forgot, in Spanish one can also say "¿Cual es tu nombre?" (literal translation of English What is your name?) It simply happens that "¿Cual es tu nombre?" is less frequent but still is perfectly valid and doesn't sound odd at all.
<<Greek and Amerindian languages don't belong to the same linguistic family. English and Spanish do. >>
That doesn't alter the fact that English 'much' < ME 'muche'/'muchel' < OE 'mycel'/'micel' is NOT related to
Spanish mucho < multo < Latin multus ("many")
OE 'mycel' ("great in number/extent") is akin to ON 'mikill', Gothic 'mikils' < PGmc mekilaz < PIE *meg-
Latin multus < PIE *mel-
no relation...
Nobody said there was a relation between both, it was used as an example of superficial and careless analysis like when one says French or whatever Romance language has Germanic influence only because there are some coincidences. In both cases it's just a question of coincidence.
Overall the flow of Spanish or French and German are completely different. That does not prevent some expressions are parallel. In the end both families are Indo European languages .
alot of these "borrowings" and "coincidences" are just Indo-European features people don't recognize cause they only focus on Germanic and Romance languages.
for example much-mucho:
Italian- Molto
Czech- Moc
Sweedish- Mycket
Russian- Mnogo
Romanian- Muit
also related to words like magnitude, magnus... and other words meaning great or large.
Use of "how are you called?"
Como se llama (how are you called?)
Jak se jmemues (How do you call yourself?)
Dutch example given above so on.
Obviously in certain languages things have gone a completely different direction on lexicon and way of saying things, but there is a lot of similarity in the basics of all Indo-European languages.
here are some English-Czech (which nobody acuses of borrowing from each other) similarities
water-voda
must- muset
may- moci
snow- sneh
wolf- vlk
sun- slunce
thats just visible examples off the top of my head- haven't even gone into deconstructing prefixes or more distantly related words. For example "to bear" meaning "to carry", has the same origin as "bere" meaning "takes".
Thank you much
Dekuju moc
Of course many "coincidences" are not such but are due to the common IE roots. What I mean is not all of these similarities are because the German tongues influenced over the Romance ones. The Germanic influence on Romance tongues is very limited even in the case of French.
<<English has "What is your name" that is more similar to Latin than to the equivalent expressions in German and Dutch. So assuming the logic (the lack of) of the Germanicists one must say that English adopted Latin "expressions". >>
LOL
No--we don't use logic, we use facts.
We know for a fact that English did not derive "What's you name" from Latin, but from independent shift from "How hoatst thou?" --> "What is you name?" with the latter winning out gradually against the former over time.
No--we don't use logic, we use facts.
You use fantasy.
<<"Hoe heet jouw man?"-Not transparent for English speakers to read and understand.
It sounds approximately like "Who hate youah/your man?" in a dialect of southern American English.
It means "What is your husband called?"
It may sound somewhat like English sometimes, but beware of Dutch! >>
Gotta beware of French too, cuz "Oui, je t'adore" sounds a lot like "We shut the door" :|)
"<<Oh, daar heb je hem net.>>
<<Oh, there have I him now [--there he is now]. >>
"daar heb je hem net" means
"there have *you* him just [now]", not "I"
Dutch 'net' is related to our word "neat" "
That's quite a semantic jump.
<<That's quite a semantic jump. >>
Yes, it is on both sides. Let's look at it closely:
English 'neat' < ME net (clean, trim, spruce) < AF neit (clear, pure) < OF 'net' < Lat nitidus (elegant, gleaming)
In Dutch, it is both and adjective meaning "neat, pure, clear, proper" and has an adverbial usage:=just
In English, if I say "he neatly left", or "neatly give me one more minute", you can begin to see how the Dutch sense evolved. 'Neatly' here meaning "precisely", "unclumsily", "deftly/adroitly", "simply" which also happens to be some of the rarer English senses of 'neat'
Sense development of English 'just' ("right", "righteous", "law-abiding') into our adverbial use of 'just' as in "He just left" is no less of a stretch.